My first experience with the modern-day inquisition came the day someone asked if I

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2 22 MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE NEW INQUISITION My first experience with the modern-day inquisition came the day someone asked if I had seen a review of my newest book. First, I had not written a recent book. There was an article about a new book, said to have been written by me. The attack was both personal and vicious. The problem? I had written no such book. I had not even read such a book. A mistake, perhaps? No, it was a fictional, but deliberate, attack. The writer of the article had created a nonexistent book, then used this book as a means of negating my name and my ministry. I thought this a rather creative idea, only to learn it was a common tool often used on the Internet to undermine, even destroy, another Christian. Welcome to the Christian Internet. Today the Internet is filled with Christians impaling other Christians. There is an old adage, If it is in print, then it must be true. This use of the Internet has curtailed and sometimes destroyed the ministry of many fine men. Google the name of almost any of today s Christian leaders, and you will find one to a dozen horrific attacks on that man, his ministry, his theology, his writings, his character. Persecution of Christians by Christians began circa A. D. 360 and continued on with death as its ultimate conclusion, until 1700 when a more enlightened era began. There were still Christians attacking Christians, but the audience was small until about Today one man can attack another man, his words being read across the world s entire population. Fanaticism has always been with us in both politics and religion. But today, one twisted or unscrupulous man who once could write a letter to one person at a time can now write that same letter to six billion people. We are in a new world of slander, the impact of which is incalculable. Most Christians will not do this. The vast majority of Christians living out there in small 2322

3 23 towns, villages, and cities have never before been exposed to such massive onslaughts, nor would most ever write such condemnations. Still, as a result, what is being printed on the Internet is also believed. The reason is simple: Christians cannot believe that another believer could say such venomous things unless they were true, and the deeds must be so ungodly that some humble servant of God was driven to attack another. Certainly the use of imagination as the only source of evidence is inconceivable. Who are the people who are turning a rapier s keyboard on others? Who are charging fellow Christians with being dangerous, with heresy, with being dictators, cult leaders, etc.? When you read such charges, keep one thing in mind: Most Christians read the attack and think, What an awful person this man must be! without stopping to consider the one who made the attack. The true reason for the attack by the attacker is never admitted. The reasons given are high sounding, but boil down to two motives: (1) competition and/or (2) jealousy. Logic, reason, theology, protecting the faith are disguises. Most attacks are born of jealousy or because the man being attacked is a competitor. On a few occasions, it is simply a sick mind. One Christian in twenty thousand would sit down at a computer, open a website and damn another Christian. Not one in twenty? Most Christians are incapable of doing such a harsh thing. Men who attack other Christians may imply that the attack is needed. The truth is that most Christians are too Christian to ever reach such a need threshold. The kind of person who would sit down at a computer and vilify another child of God is rare. His motives are righteous ; nonetheless, other believers, by the millions, never get that righteous. Be it truth or falsehood, once the inquisitionist writes his attack, no power in heaven or on earth will ever convince him that what he writes is not the absolute truth. Ask him! CYBER BULLIES These attacking ones have caught the eye of Christian psychologists. Professionals who read these attacks do not have such a kind view of these keyboard assassins. Christian psychologists have coined a word to describe such men: cyber-bullies. We now face international Christian bullies. THE SPANISH INQUISITION We can understand these men by looking at the persecution of Christians by Christians original throughout Spanish church Inquisition. history. In fact, look at all Those who persecute always do so in the name of God and in the name of protecting others from the evil people they are about to (reluctantly!) rid the world of. The accuser, the 2323

4 24 one lighting the fire which will incinerate the heretic, has done so in God s name alone... to save God s people from danger. During the time when the Roman Catholic Church was a monolith, there were those who did not agree with the Imperial Church; but there was but one mind allowed in Europe, the Catholic mind. All else was heresy and wood for the burning. In the 1500s, when the dissidents, the nonconformists, grew in number, the Catholic layman was shocked at hearing about ideas other than those which were part of his mindset. Following that shock came the thought: These ideas could hurt God s work, and could even hurt God! When feelings get to that point, lying and creating evidence become part of the greater good. Something happens inside the human heart. Truth must be protected, even if lying is necessary. Doctrines must be protected. The source of the evidence of guilt? The imagination! A man s imagination can see truth and evil more clearly than it can see fact. Imagination, ever faithful to protect God, soon provides documents and witnesses. I am a student of church history. The record of history tells us that fiction became truth in the necessity of protecting God by means of the torture rack. And now the keyboard! two ends: to protect God and to get rid of the competition. The early Priscillians were put to death by a lie. The Waldensians were accused of unthinkable wickedness. The fictional powers of man were stretched to the limit concerning Wycliffe and lit the fires of Huss s burning. This persecution is toward Today s keyboarding is murder by other means. The purpose of the attacks? To protect God, be it by fire or by ink. The wielder of the computer hears someone speak contrary to what he believes and what God believes. Someone must die! He must at least be impaled in cyberspace. 2324

5 25 In the last ten years, no Christian leaders have been nailed to a cross nor chained to a stake and burned alive. But neither do I know of a single Christian leader who has not been nailed to a cross by way of a website, his name defiled, his ministry pierced, his reputation burned at the stake by the homicidal computer. Ethics being suspended, the greater good is being served. God s people are being saved from this wicked human who is spawning thoughts which are contrary to those of the person sitting at the keyboard. THE MAN WHO DOES NOT RESPOND TO ATTACKS A man who does not respond with counterattacks is a rare man indeed. Most cannot resist making a response. It matters not that the one who vilifies others on the Internet is not worthy of an audience, although he has legions. Will the Internet be the death of great men? What is disturbing is this: The Internet will blur church history by the everlasting but untruthful assault on men who might have been bound for greatness but were stopped in the infancy of their ministry by Internet burning. If the Internet had existed five hundred years ago, there would not have been any of history s greatest figures. If there had been blogs, websites, et al, in 1949, there would never have been a Billy Graham. He would have been so attacked and so exposed worldwide that his ascent would have been impossible. I will go further. If there had been an Internet, websites, blogs, etc. during the days of Paul of Tarsus, there would have been no ministry of Paul of Tarsus. As it was, Paul could at least walk into a town unknown and do the Lord s work. If someone could have Googled Paul in the year A.D. 51, Paul would have never placed a foot in Philippi, Thessalonica, or Corinth. He would have been maligned all over the empire. The Anabaptists died by the millions in the early years of the Reformation, but if there had been an Internet, the Anabaptists would have never even been born. If the Internet had been born in 1900, you would have never heard of Watchman Nee of China, nor T. Austin Sparks of England, nor Bakht Singh of India. Their ministries would have been snuffed out before they began. How many men today will try to publish important books, only to be rejected after a publisher Googled his name? How will men be raised up who are outside the traditional church, men who question our present-day practices, men with unique contributions, who will just begin, only to have their names besmirched? 2325

6 26 A future Watchman Nee, a future John Wycliffe, a future Jon Huss, a future William Tyndale, and yes, even a future Billy Graham! They will never be known, their reputations killed in infancy. There are other destructions of which most of us can never imagine. Someone in a quiet town in Texas who goes to the local Methodist Church, and who knows nothing of the clashes between Christians, Googles a former classmate. What they read is horrifying. That dear Methodist will never know that a past friend is anything but a reprobate. So unnecessary, this tragedy is the result of a bully with a fertile imagination. Worse, shall we be limited to the bland, the mundane, services in the ministry? Shall we be led by men without courage... men who never earn the damnation of the Internet? God have mercy on Christendom when young men who are just getting started are made villains, and the faith is led by men who are not pragmatic visionaries. I see the words cult, cultist, heretic, heresy, dangerous, dictator, etc. brandished about on men who are hardly beginning. We are in the midst of a new Spanish Inquisition that can give us a Dark Age of meteoric proportions. The young Bible school student turns off his computer because he has seen a potential Martin Luther maligned. He, in turn, might have led a new kind of Anabaptist-type movement had he not read the slurs leveled about this potential Luther. A young firebrand in Athens, Greece reads a book and wants to contact the writer, but he Googles and, alas, turns off his computer. That young man might have well become another Bakht Singh. He sits there in front of a darkened monitor thinking, Is there no one else out there? Every person I thought I might learn from turns out to be evil, wicked, or at least unworthy of being listened to. WHAT SHOULD BE OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THIS NEW INQUISITION? Perhaps we should learn to do this. Having discovered a man or woman who can make a contribution but whose name is smeared, attacked, warned against, perhaps instead of turning off the computer, we should locate this man, meet him and find out for ourselves. 2326

7 27 The Christian faith is in great need of a totally new direction. We believers must now recognize that the new inquisition is here, and negative things being said on the Internet are almost universally untrue. Those who follow Christ with the greatest devotion... those who think outside the box... will be the prime victims of the Internet. The chances are excellent that the man who is doing the attacking is far worse than the one being attacked. Keep in mind that the facts you are reading on the Internet, no matter how accurate the words sound, may be pure fiction and are often born out of the dark side of the writer. Forget their statistics. Fiction is fiction. Regardless of what is said, it takes a rare human being to attack another on the worldwide Internet, even more so a Christian. Also, look for would-be theologians attacking another s theology. The number one killer of Christians has been the theologian. Someday there will arise a man or woman who will stand in the line of the great dissenters (and the greatest contributors to the Christian faith). What the Internet will do to that soul will be no less than horrible. So is the lot of the innovator. You might find that he is the one most worthy of being heard and the one you need the most. In order to hear him, you will have to get past the portrait which his critics have painted him to be. To every Christian who attacks another Christian on the Internet: For shame! Leave them alone. If they are not of God, they will disappear. If they are of God, we may find that we ourselves are resisting God. - Gamaliel 2327